Saturday, May 27, 2006

PREAMBLE:In this imagestream I wish to address the dichotomy between industrial thinking and sustainable thinking. Many have been brought up in the industrialized world and find it hard to imagine alternatives. And yet alternatives are needed; industrialization cannot go on forever. In industrialized thinking you are a worker, you own a house maybe, shares or funds. You are a citizen and can vote. To maintain your lifestyle you have to consume.

If someone wanted to use their money to invest in an organization or opportunity that would give them a sustainable return on investment what would be available to them?

I imagine this particular investment would be in real assets, generate energy, housing and food or transport in a sustainable way. Possibly, their value increases over time compared to fossil fuel powered alternatives or your investment would give a dividend in the form of these services.

Anyway, investing in these organizations, instruments would give you food, housing or transport (energy) as well as an asset that increased in value over time.

After investigating possibilities through imagestreaming I would like to make a proposal to several organizations about cooperation with AVBP to create eco-units.

THE QUEST is to visit a place where these kinds of opportunities, instruments and schemes are used successfully to offer individuals, though individual investment, the opportunity to sustainably generate their living standards and constitute an investment for their kids and the future. These investments themselves have monetary value that should increase over time.

TAPESCRIPT I am in the arrival hall, looking for a lift. I’m attracted to a dark red exhibition stand. An exhibition booth. A sign over the entrance says, “Investing in the Future”.

I go in, a man is standing at a table, he hands me a brochure.

“Are you interested in investing in the future?” he asks.“I certainly am,” I say. He chuckles a bit, which makes me feel uneasy.

The brochure contains pictures of wind power, waterpower etc. He invites me to proceed further into the stand. A few people are milling around with drinks and snacks. Screens are showing pictures of sustainable ventures.

I get a cheese on a stick to nibble and a glass of non-alcoholic cider.It’s all very informal - it seems the idea is to entice passers-by into the stand.Investment in the future – a DVD playing talks about oil, its depletion and the effects on everyone’s economy, about population pressure on the planet etc.

… However, there IS a way using renewable solutions, but we must construct them now while there is still time, for your children’s sake. Before it is too late…We already have this place going and more examples. You are being invited to join, if you like.

I feel a sense of mistrust …maybe it’s too good to be true ….or the way the guy laughed. An oxymoron to invest in the future isn’t it – what about now?

Still, it seems to be well grounded. A paper talks about number of working hours, your work, how you use your time, what you can get from this use of time, with many tables and graphs. In fact, it looks rather like an investment brief.

I browse though it, looking at graphs of future price of oil contra renewables. (I know from experience that trying to read documents in an image stream is rather difficult so I concentrate on the pictures) Another shows the number of hours you have to work to get your daily bread and the role oil plays in that. The higher oil prices rise, the less you can buy with your hour. And then it asks you what sort of life you want, and looks at the available choices.

I suppose this is a chance to browse the material and look at the videos showing places already functioning along these lines.

You can just simply sign up. I look at a paper, which says you can buy a unit or a number of units. The accompanying application form asks for your name, address and other details, and your signed request to purchase. That is all you need to get in the system.

I wonder what I would do with my unit when I have purchased it. Someone takes me aside to explain.

“What will I get for my money?” I ask.

“You become a unit holder, sir. The stands in the next part of the exhibition explain what unit holders get back from their investment.”

This stand extends into a larger, white exhibition space behind the red one. I take the investment brief and the form and move on. Each exhibitor has a table and exhibition space behind them, arranged around the outside and in the centre of the area.

People are milling around handing out brochures for various things.

At the first table someone is planning an eco unit. Depending on the number of units you have invested you can do different things in the eco unit. (Editor’s note see link to explain what an eco-unit is – an ecological village self sufficient in food and energy.) You buy a unit for a certain amount of money. From there on there is no counting in money. You can always compare to monetary value, though. In this case, to put myself in the queue to live on an eco-unit I have to have a certain number of units saved.

This queue is not yet full, they are building a total of 80 houses. One of these trust units would give me a certain number of points which I could redeem for a share in their excess food produce for example. However, it is not enough to have purchased a trust unit. I must have it placed with this organization.

Depending on how many units I place, I get points back which I can redeem against holiday, produce and a way in to buy and own a house on the eco-unit. I could also save points to contribute towards retiring to an eco-unit.

The next one is a sailing boat, a big beautiful boat. To join the scheme you place one unit with this organization. Its main purpose is to carry freight sustainably. This scheme is already going- The boat is long, wind powered, and if you invest in it you can join the crew. You can have a holiday on her or help out for good, physical, fun, If you crew you get points. These can be redeemed for produce from other organizations. A video is showing the boat … come on board… it’s beautiful … wonderful investment … just have a holiday … travel …crew .. we all need boats.

Continuing though the exhibition I am drawn to a table behind me about growing food.A person on the stand explains the scheme provides a system for growing vegetables close to your home. Place in this scheme and you get a whole kit of pots and stuff.

If you invest in this scheme you get utilitas – that is to say you do not own the equipment but you get the right to use it. (I have difficulty snapping up the phrase is it utitas or ulitas?) If you invest in the organization you get the opportunity to enjoy some of the capital.

Over the other side of the hall, a wind farm catches my attention. You place your unit in the wind farm and get the right to have a wind turbine. You do not own the turbine but you have a right to use it.

I am picking up a principle here that seems to apply throughout the examples I have seen so far– one of not actually owning anything but having a right to use things.

In this case with the wind turbines, I will earn points by putting energy back to the grid. They install the machine in your house, on your property. The energy goes back to the grid for points.

The system is simple: a wind turbine and solar panels on your roof produce electricity. The electricity you do not use feeds into the grid to earn you points.

I start to grasp the significance of the whole unit trust set-up. One unit costs about 10,000 SEK (say 900 Euros). That is quite a bit of money, but many pay that for a TV so it is affordable. It is not as if you pay once and the money is gone. This is a very secure way of investing. Because if you remove your unit from the organization then they remove the things from your house, but you can still place the unit elsewhere.

That brings me to muse about the food bit, how home growing works. I notice a stand presenting “Local Food Schemes” and walk over to it.

The stand looks like a market stall and demonstrates how the points system works across local organizations. If you invest in a Local Food Scheme, as a grower, you can sell your produce for points in the market. If a Local Food Scheme is effective and produces a lot of food, many points will accumulate. These can be swapped with the Local Housing Scheme. I start to see that although the Unit Trust organization is national, it is the local network of organizations that must “join up the dots”.

A Local Housing Scheme (LHS) can buy an apartment block, and instead of paying rent you redeem points. The reason for this is, in the future you may not have the money to pay rent or energy bills.

Or if you all own flats in an apartment block you can place units in the LHS and they will help to convert the block to low energy and take over everyday running, maintenance and upgrades.

Some advisors are walking around, I ask one:

“So can I check I have this right? I buy units, and then I have to choose where I place them. Placing my units gives me back sustainable goods and services.”

“That is correct,” she replies.

“But I never ever loose my unit. I can take it out and put it in another one?”

She smiles: ¨Where you place units depends on your state of life. You can buy units with points or use the points for consumption.”

I ask about tax but she thinks I should come back another time for that one.

She adds: “It is the unit trust (as she calls it), this organization, that puts on these events.”

“So you market yourselves this way in these exhibitions?”

She explains that they put on these exhibitions and market via traditional channels. They talk to existing organizations, cooperatives or companies and explain the benefits to them of joining. They these organisations join the scheme by purchasing units in the unit trust.

I ask for an idea of how my organization would go about joining.

She explains: “You get a number of points related to the number of people who want to invest in you. The unit trust does not invest in your company. Your organization gets a chance to meet a number of investors via us. You invest in us, and keep your unit placed with us. Our role then is one of matchmaker.”

She explains that organizations come away from an exhibition with a local contact person, address to the website, and already an idea of how to place their unit.

I thank her and leave

ReviewThings that surprised me

• The simplicity of structure of the funds

• That you can invest once use forever. It’s such a secure thing to do with your money. But can it last forever? Turbines break down, pots break, boats sink…

• The need for marketing – to have a good story to tell individuals about how peak oil will affect them and what they can do about it.

Things I could use immediately

• Marketing – the argument for sustainable investing is rather clear and compelling.

• DVD films and brochures could work well.

• Important that working examples really exist.

Things to verify

UTILITAS There must be a concept of Utilitas somewhere. It sounds like Latin. Maybe something to do with law.

UNIT TRUST I have heard this before, sounds like something like a British building society.

Sidebands

The “story” – how to explain the investment potential of renewables. The points counting I suspect I have a kind of economics going on here, but based on what people need rather than money or other units. Thins that might make up the system include number of hours in a year as working hours, food requirements, shelter and security.

Further questions

• How invest once use forever works – is it really possible?• How an organization can use the unit placements• Taxation• Legal structure• Relationship to legal tender – if I want to sell units• Understanding the arguments deeper – for example number of hours worked to be able to purchase living accommodation• Point counting administration

Research

Utilitas. From Wikipeadia: In economics, utility is a measure of the happiness or satisfaction gained consuming goods and services.

util (plural utils)1. (economics) a hypothetical unit measuring satisfactionDominum utile is the right to use something, often used in connection with feudal law in which the King held dominum directum over the land and granted this right to the lords or vassals.

I found a similar expression called USUFRUCT - The right of enjoying a thing, the property of which is vested in another, and to draw from the same all the profit, utility and advantage which it may produce, provided it be without altering the substance of the thing.

The obligation of not altering the substance of the thing, however, takes place only in the case of a complete usufruct.

Usufructs are of two kinds; perfect and imperfect. Perfect usufruct, which is of things which the usufructuary can enjoy without altering their substance, though their substance may be diminished or deteriorated naturally by time or by the use to which they are applied; as a house, a piece of land, animals, furniture and other movable effects. Imperfect or quasi usufruct, which is of things which would be useless to the usufructuary if be did not consume and expend them, or change the substance of them, as money, grain, liquors.

UNIT TRUST Wikipedia: A unit trust is form of collective investment constituted under a trust deed.Found in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and British Isles offshore jurisdictions, unit trusts offer access to wide range of securities for all types of investors.Unit trusts are open-ended investments; therefore the underlying value of the assets is always directly represented by the total number of units issued multiplied by the unit price. Each fund has a specified investment objective to determine the management aims and limitations.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

When circumstances change, your old ideas become challenged and the first reaction is to stick to them even harder. This picture shows how just that is happening in Sweden.

During the week the Swedish Prime Minister announced his belief in Biofuel as a replacement for oil, and the Energy Agency, whilst admitting oil independance is a good thing for climate and political reasons, warned that Sweden's going over to a green economy would put the country's economic development at risk if no other country was taking that line.